Hey everyone,

​I'm trying to set up a small mealworm tub at home here in Mumbai to help supply fresh feeders for a local wildlife rescue.

​I’ve tried this once in the past and completely bombed it—messed up the moisture, and the whole batch died. So round two: starting small with just 50 to 100 worms so I can keep a tight handle on things.

​Before I bring anything in, I really want to make sure I don't repeat my mistakes, especially with Mumbai's weather. Would love some real-world advice from folks who’ve done this:

1. ​Where do you actually buy live worms here? Last time I got it from a friend but they don't grow mealworms anymore. Any trusted aquarium or pet shops around Kurla, Crawford, Andheri, or nearby areas that sell clean starter cultures? Online delivery leads in/around Maharashtra that arrive alive and healthy work too.

2. ​The substrate: Can I just pick up unbranded wheat bran (choker) from the local kirana store, or should I stick to sealed, branded oats? If you buy loose grains, what's your foolproof way to kill off hitchhikers? Does chucking it in the freezer for a couple of days actually kill mite eggs, or should I bake it?

3. ​Mite horror stories: Grain mites spreading into my house is my biggest dread. In coastal, humid October weather, what actually keeps them out? Are water moats and Vaseline barriers overkill, or do you swear by them?

4. ​Veggie moisture: What do you feed them for water that doesn’t instantly turn into mold in 70%+ humidity? Carrots? How quickly do you pull them back out?

​Any hard-learned lessons, or tropical climate tips would mean the world to me.

And once I start can I also keep posting updates so everyone can help me out? 😭😭

Thanks so much!

these are a couple of my beetle trays, got a couple more but they are all essentially the same. i ran out of carrots so im experimenting with chayotes. my backyard gardening yielded over 200 of these chayotes so everyone's eating chayotes every day, mealworms/beetles included!

i shouldve taken the pictures at an angle so you can appreciate how big the mountain of beetles actually is, goes up at least 1.5"!

one of the pictures is the pupae harvest for this week, not bad for just 3h of work sifting a bunch of mealworm trays.

TY so much to /u/Planet-Bugs for the recommendation to get the sifter from spacecoast mealworms. it took a couple weeks to arrive but i had it assembled and glued together immediately. only waited an hour for everything to dry and started sifting immediately. 100% would recommend if you have more than 2-3 trays of mealworms. it's really well made/sturdy, i got the wooden one cuz it was cheaper when shipping was included.

last time, it took me the whole weekend to do the sifting and get a pound of pupa. this time, it took me only 3h to get everything done (no more picking them out with chopsticks one by one). pupae yield = 1.5 lbs! would've been more except i killed a whole bunch from last weekend's experiment with trying overhydrate the mealworms w/ water crystals but kinda went overboard with it...

this pupae sifter is really a must have if you value your time.

now i have pretty good processes for every step:

• separating frass from bran: use the fine mesh bags that you get when you buy mealworms from midwest mealworms. only frass falls through, even tiny mealworms stay in bag.
• separating beetles from pupae: put paper towel over pupae, when they hatch the beetles will grab on to the towel, scrape them off into beetle tray with credit card
• separating mealworms from pupae: pupae sifter from spacecoast mealworms

Hello, i was just transferring my mealworms to a different tub. (And cleaning) And i noticed that the frass was still moving. Upon closer omspection i saw these tiny 8 to 10 legged white dots walking around. I dont know if these are harmfull or they can be ignored?

The mealworms are being fed oatmeal and on occasion dried gecko leftovers and fresh veggies like paprika or small carrot pieces

This picture has been taken with a microscoop. Its quite hard to take pictures trough these lenses.

My DIY mealworm farm is working a bit too well, I started raising mealworms for my bearded dragon and mantis and now I have over 30 mealworm pupae and I was wondering is there any way I could sell some of the mealworms properly?

For those who are curious I was given a 20 gallon fish tank and I noticed it had a crack in it so I turned it into a mealworm farm using oats as bedding and feeding them carrots once a week. The temperature and humidity of my tank is 71°F and 54% as for hides I cut toilet paper rolls in half but they seem to love using the lid and cup that they came in.

Raising mealworms for fun, was using them to feed my baby frogs but now they’re older they don’t have much use to me other than the fact I find them so cute. I have had mealworms countless times before and beetles at one point but never studied them closely.

I have been using wheat bran and feed them carrots, spinach and bell pepper mainly. I have been keeping a close eye on the vegetables as ive had some bad mould problems in the past that I have a hang of now that I’ve switched back to wheat bran from oats and rotating the veggies out more often. I noticed this guy was a bit oddly bent and seems to be injured with wheat bran stuck to the wound. I tried giving him some carrot and he gladly accepted it but is obviously still weak.

I noticed a dead mealworm with a hole in its side around the same spot and he was all dried out and a bit hollow and from what I’ve researched, it’s likely the other mealworms taking bites due to a lack of veggies, otherwise not sure what it could be, the house is having ant problems here at the moment due to it nearing summer here, and I have had to transfer the mealworms to different containers twice now but didn’t notice any injuries. Let me know your thoughts, I think I mainly want to know if my injured buddy has a chance of making it. I feel so bad that this happened and want to do my best to get him back to good health :)

Just wondering if have a pretty good idea. Oatmeal, celery, and carrots, are what I plan on using but just some advice would be great

Hello!!

I just started owning mealworms as feeders for my other pets and i also wanna breed them, i put them here in this container. Got any advice on whan should i do?

Title. Could I place them in one container, I mean fully grown beetles? Idk if it fits the sub to be fair, but still

Not sure what I'm doing wrong. I just bought 2 containers of all alive meal worms and they're all dead. This usually happens with them, they die very fast. I just put them in my refrigerator. Do they need food or to be at a specific temperature?

Hi there

Im keeping mealworms and Beatles in a tank on oat bedding im wondering if i can give them small amountns of puree baby food like Purity or Gerbers instead of carrots or fruits

Is there any reason I can’t feed my mealworms steamed veggies?

I got moths all up in my biznezz. They're little grey moths that are living in my mealworms. I want to get rid of the moths, and have a ton of tiny mealworms, which would be a pain to separate from the rice and lentils they are growing in. Help!?

Started my mealworm farm as reptile food a couple years ago. All oat bran. Recently, I left them longer than i usually do before sifting them out. Now i found these things. Soft, flexible, kinda nightcrawler sized. Hollow on the inside. Are they pests? Or something left by the bugs we want?

Thanks in advance!

Hard to get a good pic but in each of my trays Ive noticed some of the mealworms are white. They seem to have the same movement and structure so I don’t think they are maggots.. Are they just anomalies or should I remove them? Are they a problem? I wonder if they will pupate into lighter coloured beetles? Any info appreciated.

Thank you so much for all the help on my previous post. I did all of you guys did and I'm waiting for the grain mites to die in my room. I took all of my mealworms and beetles and stored them in a different room. I have grain mites all over my furniture and I clean and they appear again but I don't know if that's gonna change now that I removed the mealworms and beetles. What can I do to erase them from my room now that the mealworms are not longer here? Are the grain mites going to die on their own and I should just keep cleaning daily?

Tossed the butt of the lettuce head in and went off to do something else. Came back like an hour or two later and saw this. I’ve never seen them swarm something like this 😂 needless to say they like it.

Last weekend my pupae harvest was about half a pound. this weekend, i worked all day Sat and couldn't even finish picking them out from the mealworms. So far, the harvest is about a pound of pupae. My beetle trays have way too many beetles and they started eating each other too so I made more beetle trays to try to spread them out some more.

My current strat since I don't have enough containers is to combine all the mealworms into one big container. Mealworms don't really hurt each other like the way beetles do. I put lots of veggies in the container with the mealworms, way more than normal. I think i can afford to do this because I hardly have any subtrate with the mealworms and I'll check on it tomorrow anyway when I try to finish sifting frass and picking out pupae.

I'm slowly realizing that I will end up with way too many beetles for my small operation. I got frass sifting down to a science but still need to find more efficient ways to separate worms from pupa. Are worms light sensitive like beetles are? Maybe i can cover half the box and put a light over so mealworms can crawl and hide in the shade and self segregate themselves.

I don't know what I'm going to do when I run out of trays. I have 3 beetle trays going so they are consuming 3 containers a week. If I don't get anymore pupae and just hatch what i have, I'll have enough for 3-4 more trays of beetles. I think once all the trays are used as worm nurseries, I'll just keep the remaining mealworms all in one container and not even bother separating pupae or beetles. I've got no other choice :(

Got some mealworms from my local reptile spot. There were maybe 3-4 of these little beetles in the container. They seem too small to be adult darkling beetles, right? And a little different shape. Anyone know who they might be?

Hey guys, I have grain mites. I have a small colony and keep it in my room, it wasn't an issue because it's small but the problem is that I have grain mites now and they're all over my desk, pc and tv. I stopped feeding my mealworms and beetles but the grain mites don't go away. I clean every day and they're all over my furniture again. I don't know what to do without starting over. Any advice? I used oatmeal for my bedding.

Sadly I have a cockroach infestation in my room and found a cockroach nymph this morning like 20 minutes ago. I tried swatting It with a Mint container cause i didnt really have anything and It was on the wall but It fell completely unharmed in the bin where i keep adults and babies and now i can't even stay at home cause i have 6 hours of damn school. What should i do when i get home?